Currently, any action you put under “Run in parallel” (https://peyanski.com/home-assistant-2022-5-the-most-exciting-features/#Home_Assistant_20225_Parallelizing_Actions), is run in parallel. That means you can paralellize only single actions. But what if you want to parallelize whole blocks/sequences?
Could you please update “Run in parallel” so it allows blocks/sequences? Similar way how “If condition” has “then” and “else”, and you can put multiple actions into “then”, multiple actions into “else”. Here it would be “sequence 1”, “sequence 2”… and those sequences would be run to parallel to each other, but tasks in them in sequence, if that makes sense:
Switch the Automation Editor to YAML mode and type it in.
The Automation Editor is unlikely to include every possible scripting feature, in UI mode, because it would overwhelm new and average users. Making a simple automation would become an onerous process of slogging through many unfamiliar options. For example, I have seen users improperly configure a simple State Trigger by mistakenly filling in the attribute field because they thought it couldn’t be left blank.
If someone understands an advanced concept like parallelization of actions, enabling the feature in YAML mode should be a trivial task for them.
Nevertheless, you are certainly free to make a Feature Request for its inclusion in the UI.
That’s a problem of UI that’s not intelligible to users (e.g. “attribute” should be clearly indicated as not required), not a problem of exposing things in the UI in the first place. Running actions in sequence/in series inside a parallel action block isn’t any more foreign of a concept than running in parallel in the first place. Maybe there should be a simple mode for users who want to remove more advanced options, but as an advanced user sometimes, shocking I know, I might want to use the UI instead of yaml because editing text on my phone sucks and I’m not on my computer.
Yaml itself has a discoverability problem. It’s nice to use the UI because it presents the options that aren’t already turned on: there’s an option for “run in parallel” even though nothing is already doing so, or a field for “attribute” even though it’s not used. Some configuration implementations use “add all defaults as blank initially”, which shows what options you are able to use even if you’re using yaml; HA doesn’t do that so the docs, complete albeit sometimes unclearly written though they may be, have to be pored over instead of just using the UI where the list of options are included in-place.
The dismissive and condescending attitude of “read the docs” and “use yaml” doesn’t help the community grow in a positive direction, and I really hate to see it.
@tomas1 It looks like this is still not available in the UI. As a work-around, I have used a Repeat block with the number of repeats set to 1.
It is less satisfying, but functionally should be the same.
ah… i looked for a duplicate and did not see that one when i searched. that one does seem to have morphed from it’s original request which was to support it functionally to then the gui. not sure what the right thing is in terms of calling this a duplicate or not.
This is duplicate of the Feature Request linked above - it’s the exact same thing I want to achieve. I’m working on adding it to GUI, but it doesn’t go as quick as I’d wish.
that’s a workaround…to be blunt, one of the use cases is helping people here in this forum.
It’s a bit more complex to instruct someone to do that in this community forum… on the flip side if we post the yaml for it in one script/automation then then they go switch it to the gui, the gui kinda barfs on it.